Ramaphosa should have acted – Zondo report questions president's failure to lead
The final state capture report not only made damning findings against former president Jacob Zuma, but also painted a bleak picture of current president Cyril Ramaphosa.
The commission of inquiry into state capture handed its final report to Ramaphosa at the Union Buildings on Wednesday evening.
In the report, the commission points out that questions were being asked about the Gupta family's relationship before the former public protector shone a light on their dealings with the state.
Ramaphosa was the country’s deputy president at the time.
The commission notes that Ramaphosa, in his testimony before the commission, offered little in the way of personal, direct insights into state capture.
It goes on go on to say that the question is not only whether he knew about state capture, but whether he ought to have known.
"The wealth of evidence before this Commission suggests that the answer is yes," they state.
"There was surely enough credible information in the public domain, long before December 2015, to at least prompt him to inquire and perhaps act on several serious allegations. As the deputy president, he surely had the responsibility to do so.
"The President put it to the commission that he remained in government to resist state capture and would have been dismissed if he was more confrontational.
"Yet he did not give any evidence as to why he believed this was the case,” the commission points out.
The report states that Ramaphosa kept quit due the political reality of the time or, as he called it, the balance of forces.
"This is an indictment of the party and its leadership,” the report states.
The report points out when Ramaphosa did act, as was the case when Des van Rooyen was appointed as finance minister, he was effective.
“It is difficult, then, to understand why other obligations in the public domain...continued to go unaddressed for so long."
Chief Justice Raymond Zondo concludes: "In my view, if President Ramaphosa had spoken out - and he did not need to have been confrontational - and spoken out firmly against state capture and wrongdoing, and President Zuma fired him, that stance could have given hope to a lot of members of the Cabinet who may have been looking for someone to lead in this regard."
Zondo says Ramaphosa could still have fulfilled his political ambitions, despite being fired, had he spoken up.
He goes on: "In my view, he should have spoken up.”
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